"'Tis
Betsy Croot is the old witch. She an' her daughter, the dirty
rat. I'll put a spell on 'em, the old nuisances."
As she limped slowly away her eye caught the chalk inscription on
the barn door.
"What's written up there?" she demanded, wheeling round on
Crefton.
"Vote for Soarker," he responded, with the craven boldness of the
practised peacemaker.
The old woman grunted, and her mutterings and her faded red shawl
lost themselves gradually among the tree-trunks. Crefton rose
presently and made his way towards the farm-house. Somehow a good
deal of the peace seemed to have slipped out of the atmosphere.
The cheery bustle of tea-time in the old farm kitchen, which
Crefton had found so agreeable on previous afternoons, seemed to
have soured to-day into a certain uneasy melancholy. There was a
dull, dragging silence around the board, and the tea itself, when
Crefton came to taste it, was a flat, lukewarm concoction that
would have driven the spirit of revelry out of a carnival.
"It's no use complaining of the tea," said Mrs. Spurfield hastily,
as her guest stared with an air of polite inquiry at his cup.
"The kettle won't boil, that's the truth of it.
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